A film depicting the heroism of a Bangladeshi immigrant…has no Bangladeshis in its cast
When I first moved to New York two years ago, and began exploring the stories of immigrant taxi drivers, Raisuddin “Rais” Bhuiyan’s name came up quite often. Bhuiyan is a hero among local Bangladeshi immigrants (he is based in Texas), with his story deeply woven into the narratives of immigrants’ struggles and of Islamophobia.
A former worker at a mini-mart in Dallas, TX, Bhuiyan was victim of an Islamophobic attack 10 days after 9/11 . He was shot in the face by a self-proclaimed “Arab-slayer”.
But he survived. And he chose to use his second chance at life to fight against the death penalty of his attacker. Though his efforts were unsuccessful, they led to the creation of “World Without Hate”, an organization that aims to promote peace, empathy and forgiveness.
And today, nearly 20 years after Bhuiyan’s attack, his story will be made into a Hollywood movie, with the potential to reach a worldwide audience.
But despite the excitement of Bhuiyan’s story putting Bangladesh on the map, we’re disappointed. Turns out Hollywood could not come up with a single actor of Bangladeshi (or Bengali) origin to play Bhuiyan’s role. The directors have cast Mark Ruffalo for the role of Bhuiyan’s attacker (we approve, duh), and Kumail Nanjiani for the role of Bhuiyan because the year is 2018 and Hollywood still thinks all brown people are the same 🤷🏾 (fact-check: nope).
Nanjiani is best known for his recent film The Big Sick, which he co-wrote, executive produced and starred in; he is lesser known for the stir created from his depiction of South Asian women in the film where he portrays all — literally, all —South Asian women to be desperate and pining for his very average existence. [Sidenote: this is a gross misrepresentation of an entire species so we can already establish that Nanjiani just has issues with representation (or lack thereof)].
Casting Nanjiani appears to be a lazy decision on part of the producers, who reportedly were also considering Riz Ahmed for the role. But these producers should know better than to cherrypick the few brown men from the industry for the role, and could have instead cast a wider net for someone who could actually represent a Bangladeshi immigrant.
South Asia, as in any other region of the world, has its own history of unity and division, and choices like this — casting a token brown actor to represent someone from just one part — pack an entire region into one identity, and deny the nuances that exist across the borders.
We’re all for unity — especially for a movie that is based on the power and beauty of coming together, but that doesn’t change the fact the representation matters. Bangladeshi stories have often been left out of the margins of greater South Asian narratives, and this could’ve been an apt opportunity to put a Bangladeshi on the map (because, there are options). The least Hollywood could’ve done when telling the story of a Bangladeshi immigrant is to have cast someone who has a better context of the identity — not just anyone who has the same skin color.
